The scene takes place on October 29, 2019, in a Capitol room, in Washington, and it is dramatic. Faced with merciless senators, the Boeing boss must answer for the two crashes of the new 737 MAX, in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which resulted in the death of 346 people in October 2018 and March 2019. But Dennis Muilenburg does not confront only the fire of questions, he undergoes another pressure: at the opening of the hearing, seated two rows behind him, families of victims brandish portraits of the disappeared. The man barely turns, unable to meet their looks …
On that day, it was the eternal conflict between security and profitability, between engineers and financiers, which broke out in an area in which the lives of passengers must prevail over the course of action on Wall Street. The Boeing case illustrates an unwritten law: a human and industrial catastrophe often occurs in an environment of heightened competition and unrestrained race to lower costs, sometimes amplified by the arrogance of engineers and managers. What the new CEO, David Calhoun, acknowledged by assuring that Boeing had not had any ” worst ennemy “ than himself.
The spite of the Americans
This strategic endeavor was previously revered by the Americans. Boeing, established throughout its territory with 130,000 employees and a network of thousands of subcontractors, is one of the largest exporters in the country, while the Trump administration launched a trade war against China and Europe. It is the primary supplier of the Pentagon, a key cog in the military-industrial complex. And even more than all that: a company that wrote the most beautiful pages in the history of the United States with the victory during the second world war, the conquest of space, the globalization of tourism.
We understand the spite of the Americans. And even more so that of Donald Trump, who campaigned for his re-election in November, on his economic balance sheet and strong of his rustic slogan “Make America great again”. He did not hide it, Wednesday, January 22, on the sidelines of the Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland). “Boeing is a big, big disappointment for me, he said on CNBC. It was, let’s say until a year ago, one of the biggest bands in the world, and suddenly a lot of things happened. All of this had a huge impact. “ Especially on growth.
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